Whether between the heads of sovereign states, business associates, troglodyte tribes in the tropics or horny men expecting quid pro blowjob reciprocation, the tradition of gift-giving is firmly entrenched in human society as a means of ensuring communal cohesion, collective camaraderie, consistent commonality and cocksure copulation.

Value is in the eye of the receiver, too. I can’t imagine that Liz Taylor was any more moved by the $8 million diamond that Richard Burton gave her on her 40th birthday than I was with the signed, laminated ‘Happy Father’s Day’ plate my daughter Julia gave me in 2003 when she was four—backwards ‘J’ and all.

I still use it whenever I do homemade sliders.

That said, it is certainly the unwritten understanding by suitor and suited alike that within the arc of one’s increasing income, the gifts must become more extravagant, both as a means of ensuring open-ended loyalty from the gifted, and equally, to splash news of your astonishing net worth to friends and neighbors without passing out photocopies of your 2012 tax return.

And what to my Wondering eyes should appear…?

For example, three years ago on the occasion of Stevie Wonder’s 60th birthday, his long-time friend and manager Keith Harris presented the Saginaw soul soloist with the ultimate in bling accessories: A pair of platinum, sapphire-studded prosthetic eyeballs designed by Sheils Jewelers of Australia, under warranty for one million years and rumored to be worth $450,000 each—thus answering the age old quandary ‘What do you give to a guy who has everything except ghetto ocular reconstruction?’

Care To See a Copy of My 2012 Tax Return?

Well, I’d like to show it to you, too, especially since in May of last year Intoxicology Report was purchased by MediaNews Group (backed by the Hearst Corporation) for an obscene, almost prurient amount of cash—an amount that I would happily reveal to you if it wasn’t for the goddamned unilateral non-disclosure agreement they made me sign.

But, I checked with my legal team, and they assure me that whereas I can’t be all specific about the zillions of dollars in my personal portfolio, I would be within the statutes of the Hearst contract to describe in detail the date I had last Saturday night and let you put the puzzle pieces together yourself.

Ergo, Hence and Thusly:

Anyway, I always thought it was sort of pervie when a dude bought a woman a sexy dress, handed it to her and said, ‘Here, wear this tonight’, because it takes a lot of the coyness out of your ultimate end game, which is not a rousing game of Uno. And yet, when I became independently, salaciously, almost lewdly wealthy, I realized that this is exactly the sort of pervie dude I am.

So what? The rich don’t need to be coy—they just need to be rich.

A non-Kennedy models ‘the dress’.

So, my date—who going forward I will refer to simply as Bonquawalaqweisha, because quite frankly, she’s a Kennedy and doesn’t want anyone to find out she’s dating a man whose grandfather was a Mexican national—agreed to wear the little black Chloe and Reese cocktail dress I bought her. What makes it special is that the bodice of the dress is adorned with 190 gems from the firm’s ‘Three-Carat Round Diamond Collection’, while the sleeves and back are decorated with 24 precious stones each.

As for me—admittedly without a lot of natural ‘fashion sense’—nonetheless also opted to dress ‘to the nines’. And literally, too: I wore the Zvezda-manufactured Soyuz 9 space suit I purchased at The Stanislavovich Rozhdestvenskij Space History Sale for twenty million rubles—worth every kopek, too, since it was worn by cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev during his record-breaking Soyuz 9 space walk.

Cedriquze Carmelontae

My personal valet—who I will henceforth refer to as Cedriquze Carmelontae since he doesn’t want his peers to know that he works for someone who once, while on trial for felony possession, tried to sell drugs to the jury—thought the gold-plated welding shield on my space helmet was a little ‘affected’ looking. Well, screw him: Rich people don’t have to listen to valets, and if we play our cards right, we don’t even have to pay them.

Joël and Lizzie

Rather than take Bonquawalaqweisha to your standard clip-joint like The French Laundry or Urasawa, I flew her to the billion dollar Taj Arabia in Dubai and hired Vegas Super-Chef Joël Robuchon—who has more Michelin stars than Elisabeth Jagger has armpit hairs—to whip us up some exclusive, upscale sliders.

In the Meantime, We Began with Cocktails…

Heffernan reaches the home stretch with ‘The Winston’…

I had also lured Australian mixologist Joel Heffernan from his luxury lounge, Crown’s Club 23, for the two days required to prepare us a couple of ‘Winstons’. Named for that fat cigar-insufflating drunk who won World War II, a ‘Winston’ is concocted from an ounce of 1858 Croizet cognac, Grand Mariner Quintessence, Chartreuse Vieillissement Exceptionnellement Prolonge, and a dash of ground bone from St. Augustine’s left femur.

Heffernan presented the drinks with chocolate nutmeg dust, essence of poppy seed and roses, hints of coconut, passion-flower and distilled, purified ox urine. Just one drink each, mind you, because rich people don’t need to get their dates drunk, they just need to be hung like a Hebrew National. And be rich.

Joël Robuchon’s Restaurant Is Not As Well Known As White Castle…

…But I do give Gault Millau’s‘Chef of the Century’ credit for figuring out how to screw up a perfectly serviceable, grandiosely greasy mighty-whitey one-bitey.

At least he served me on my Happy Father’s Day plate.

Before and after

But, pointedly, rather than using traditional slider beef, which comes from Equatorial African cattle which are generally infected with hoof-and-mouth-disease, he prepared the amuse-bouche using a special breed of Nagano Snow Monkey fed exclusively on rice, maize and dried llama meat. Nor could he leave the onions alone, either. Only rare, Ecuadorian Azure Mist ‘Cebollas de Llullaillaco’ would do, and only those he commissioned Porto midfielder Cristian ‘The Onion’ Rodriguez to pick, the pompous twit.

Anyway, being a Kennedy, Bonquawalaqweisha was less interested in the food than the drink, and of course, we enjoyed her favorite: A gilded, 15 liter Nebuchadnezzar of Armand de Brignac Champagne, which, thanks to the homage paid it by rapper Jay-Z, has become a real ace among spades.

After That?

Mince pie time! But not just any mince pie, thank you very much. This one was first designed on a computer and made with 50-year-old Angostura Legacy Rum, bound with holy water from Lourdes and sweetened with ambergris sugar that comes from secretions of sperm whales. Finally, the confectionary was entirely cloaked in edible gold leaf.

Taj Arabia

Since I had rented the Taj Arabia for the whole evening, there was no reason to rush off and risk a DUI in my supercharged 1936 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic; rather, I was able to enjoy a nightcap or three. Being, at heart, a street kid from Detroit, I toned it down a couple of octaves and went with a fifth of 190° grain alcohol—albeit in a ‘bush-league’ flavor: Whiskey Mango Fox-Tit.

The evening concluded as it began, as this column will end where it began, alpha and omega: With a gift from me to Bonquawalaqweisha, who—as I may have mentioned—is a Boston Brahmin from Clan Kennedy, and who therefore has a sexual appetite far beyond my trifling white boy libido to satisfy, and especially not after a punch bowl full of Whiskey Mango Fox-Tit.

This pocket rocket cost more than Apollo 7

No worries, though: I was able to present my randy little minx with a custom-designed Pearl Royal vibrator by jeweler Colin Burn cast in solid platinum and embellished with more than a thousand pink and white sapphires, diamonds and pearls.

Think of me when you deploy, my million dollar baby.

As for me, I will be in the back performing my obligatory (if rather bloody and grotesque) rich-guy ritual, sacrificing one of Constitutional Monarch Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s 23 children to my God—who I will simply call La’sharitiavuana since He really doesn’t like to admit that I worship Him.

One down, 22 to go

But really, such a consecrated offering is much more than a groveling act of propitiation and appeasement intended to prevent the sun from exploding. It can truly be viewed, now as in pre-Columbian Tenochtitlan, as a reciprocal endowment; a return gift to the Deity for all the light, grace, Kennedys and greenbacks he has bestowed upon me.

*

‘And Christian Kassel, he also brought of the firstlings of the heathen flock and of the flesh of the blood and fat thereof. And La’sharitiavuana had respect unto Christian and to his offering.’– Genesis 4: 3-5